ISSUE 11 17 JULY - 23 JULY 2018
LIVE & ALBUM REVIEWS MUSIC NEWS GIG LISTINGS OUT OF TOWN
A Summer Evening With....
NATALIE MERCHANT
ISSUE 11
CONTENTS NATALIE MERCHANT
Ahead of her St. George’s Church gig, Natalie Merchant spoke to Jeff Hemmings about her career in music and how she’s using it to help others
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3 ALBUMS
BRINGING THE ARTISTS CLOSER TO YOU... CEO: Frank Sansom EDITOR: Daniel White
LISTINGS
LIVE REVIEWS
Our recommended listings and previews of this week’s gigs
Love Supreme Jazz Festival, BODEGA and Stonefield all feature in this week’s reviews
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Check out the latest album releases
PRODUCTION: Adam Kidd, Jonski Mason COVER SHOT: Jacob Blickenstuff CONTRIBUTORS: Jamie MacMillan, Jeff Hemmings, Iain Lauder, Ben Noble, Liam McMillen, Ben Walker, Christian Middleton, Kelly Westlake, Paul Hill, Chloe Hashemi, Dan Whitehouse, Annie Roberts press@brightonsfinest.com advertising@brightonsfinest.com
OUT OF TOWN
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Our favourite upcoming gigs outside of Brighton
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NEWS
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Yumi And The Weather, the Brighton-based project fronted by the crystalline-voiced singer/songwriter/producer Ruby Taylor, will be releasing their debut album in September. To celebrate they will be holding a launch party in Brighton with details to be announced soon.
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Brighton’s unapologetic retro-pop romanticists, FUR have just released their latest single ‘What Would I Do’. Brighton fans can catch the four-piece supporting Matt Hollywood and The Bad Feelings at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar on Tuesday 28th August 2018.
London indie-pop trio Kero Kero Bonito are releasing their new album, Time ’n’ Place, later this year, with the first release ‘Time Today’ out now. Their leftfield alt-pop is weird and wonderful, and they are playing their first Brighton date since 2013 at Patterns, on 2nd October.
GIG LISTINGS The Hope & Ruin
PREVIEWS The Prince Albert
The Hidden Wednesda 18th July Tickets: TBC Presented by Brighton Noise
Fur Dixon & WTFUKISHIMA! Tuesday 17th July Tickets: £9.35 Presented by Stay Sick!
Homesteads Thursday 19th July Tickets: £6 Presented by Homesteads
Tigercats Friday 20th July Tickets: £5.50
BADLAWS Friday 20th July Tickets: £5 Presented by Little Music Management Big Slammu Sunday 22nd July Tickets: £5 OTD Presented by Yeah Go On Then Damn Teeth Monday 23rd July Tickets: £3.30 Presented by Yeah Go On Then Queen Kwong Wednesday 25th July Tickets: £9 Presented by One Inch Badge Parliament Of Trees Thursday 26th July Tickets: £5 OTD Presented by Albion Awake Town Of Cats Friday 27th July Tickets: £5.50 Presented by Town Of Cats Vinyl Staircase Saturday 28th July Tickets: £4.40 Presented by Acid Box
Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar Employed To Serve Wednesday 25th July Tickets: £8.50 Presented by Lout Promotions The Mystery Lights Thursday 26th July Tickets: £10 Presented by Acid Box Promotions
The Brunswick Birdeatsbaby Saturday 28th July Tickets: £7.70
Latest Music Bar The Alchemy Thursday 19th July Tickets: £4.50 Presented by Brighton Peers
Charley Crockett Wednesday 25th July Tickets: £12.38 Presented by One Inch Badge
Green Door Store Suzi Island Tuesday 17th July Tickets: FREE Presented by New Haven Foyer
Projector – Green Door Store – Thursday 19th July 2018 Projector first came on our radar when we heard that the phenomenal drummer from The Hundredth Anniversary was in the band and, with their single launch set at the Green Door Store, expect dark grungy sounds with gentle harmonies mixed gloriously with raucous screams that will easily make them one of your favourite Brighton bands. Support comes from three fantastic local rock acts in Egyptian Blue, CLT DRP and Beach Riot.
Pandora Echo Wednesday 18th July Tickets: £4 OTD Presented by Green Door Store Animal House Friday 20th July Tickets: £5 OTD Presented by Premium Mediocre Tatty Seaside All-Dayer Saturday 21st July Tickets: £12.10 Presented by Tatty Seaside Town Dog Of Man Sunday 22nd July Tickets: £5.50 Presented by Magic Potion Promotions Even As We Speak Wednesday 25th July Tickets: £11 Presented by Sarah Records The Rock House Festival Saturday 28th July Tickets: £6-£10 Presented by Carousel
PICK OF T HE WEEK
Amadou & Mariam – Concorde 2 – Friday 20th July 2018 Now, this has gig of the year potential written all over it. The Malian duo have been there and done that over the span of three decades, releasing eight fulllength records, including last year’s La Confusion, which received rave reviews across the board and spawned the single ‘Bofou Safou’. Their Afrobeat style, mixed with disco and funk, is sure to bring the party vibes to Concorde 2 for what is set to be one of the best gigs of the year.
The Kut Sunday 29th July Tickets: £5.75 Presented by The Kut
Patterns Peanut Butter Wolf Tuesday 19th July Tickets: £16.50 Presented by Houses In Motion
Brighton Dome Steve Earle & The Dukes Tuesday 17th July Tickets: £32 Presented by One Inch Badge
Jazz Re:Fest – Brighton Dome – Sunday 22nd July 2018 Jazz re:freshed can take a lot of credit for the re-emergence of the UK’s jazz scene: running a weekly residency in London for the past 15 years. They are now bringing their jazz extravaganza, to the Brighton Dome this year. It will feature live performances from over 60 musicians, artists and DJs including Vels Trio, Daniel Casimir, Yussef Dayes, Noya Rao, Blue Lab Beats, Ruby Rushton, plus many more and is FREE for under-16s.
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LIVE REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS Gorillaz - The Now Now Out: 29th June 2018
Ironically, after Humanz, this is Gorillaz’s most human release; it’s an honest release for a band that has stripped back its visual elements and, two songs aside, it’s collaboration free, mainly focussing on Albarn’s luxurious voice. Gone are the surrealist moments, Gorillaz have grounded themselves in the here and the now (now). It’s a brilliant pop album that zips with vitality, affection and a whole melting pot of brilliant ideas.
The production on Losers/ Lovers feels very rich, despite being a little samey throughout, but if you’ve heard a track or two from Orchards, there are no surprises there. Despite the upbeat production, the lyrics portray very negative emotions, although the contrast between the two is very interesting as a listener. This EP is significant because it takes everything Orchards have excelled in so far and expresses it collectively.
Orchards - Losers/Lovers Out: 6th July 2018
The sixth Love Supreme Jazz Festival was bathed in wall to wall sunshine for its duration: a veritable cauldron of baking summer sounds and party vibes emanating from all corners of Glynde Place. With Sunday headliners Earth, Wind & Fire cementing their reputation as one of the all-time disco-funk greats.
As an artificial voice repeats the words “Heaven knows I’m miserable now”, throughout the night, you immediately gather BODEGA aren’t just any other band: they’re exciting, imperative and armed with their own manifesto.
As an experimental group, it was really great to see each member offering a significant contribution to each track. Stonefield showed why they deserved to be headlining and they’d clearly be able to pull it off in much bigger venues.
Read the full reviews at Brightonsfinest.com/live
Read the full reviews at Brightonsfinest.com/albums
NIGHTLIFE
OUT OF TOWN
OZ Friday 20th July Green Door Store 11pm - 4am
Culprate Friday 20th July Hideout 11pm - 4am
This Is The Kit Wednesday 18th July Boileroom, Guildford 7pm
Gary Numan Thursday 19th July Assembly Hall, Worthing 7pm
UKG Summer Special with Sticky Friday 20th July Patterns 11pm - 4am
The Brighton Skanival Weekender 2018 Friday 20th July - Saturday 21st July Volks
J-Felix Friday 20th July Horse & Groom, Shoreditch, London 9pm
King Lagoon’s Flying Swordfish Dance Band Saturday 21st July Paper Dress Vintage, London 7.45pm
Mella Dee Saturday 21st July Patterns 11pm - 4am
Seb Zito / Lauren Lo Sung Saturday 21st July The Arch 11pm - 5am
Levellers Acoustic Sunday 22nd July De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill 7pm
The Correspondents Sunday 22nd July Brixton Jamm, London 6pm
DJ Hype with MX Skibadee Saturday 21st July Concorde 2 7pm - 5am
House Off Go Bang! Saturday 21st July Green Door Store 11pm - 4am
Acid Mothers Temple Monday 23rd July Cafe OTO, London 7.30pm
Benin City Tuesday 24th July O2 Forum Kentish Town, London, 7pm
Full event listings at Brightonsfinest.com/listings
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NATALIE MERCHANT With a stripped-back set at St. George’s Church on 27th July, Jeff Hemmings spoke to Natalie Merchant about 10,000 Maniacs, the music industry and helping children through music
When she was just 17, Natalie Merchant was working in a health food store and was considering a career in special education whilst at college in her home city of Jamestown, which sits just below Lake Erie, straddling the border with Canada. Harbouring no more than your average desire to sing in a band, she was invited to do some vocals for a group called Still Life in 1981. They then inexplicably decided to call the band Burn Victims, before settling on 10,000 Maniacs all in the same year, performing their first gig under that name on 7th September. Named after the obscure 60s low-budget grindhouse splatter flick Two Thousand Maniacs!, 10,000 Maniacs became huge on the alternative college circuit, as well as finding an early fan in the shape of John Peel, who turned on his radio listeners to the band via their song ‘My Mother The War’. “The only solid plan I had was to go to New York City to attend art school,” says Natalie Merchant. “I wanted to be an artist and in the end achieved that goal.” Fast forward to 2018, and Natalie Merchant is fast approaching elder stateswoman status. She’s a rare breed, an artist with the utmost integrity, one who has never compromised, and whose work is infused with a mixture of intelligent thought and musical poetry. Now 53, she left 10,000 Maniacs at the peak of their success in 1993, forging out a solo career that continues to this day. She’s in the UK to perform some intimate shows in places she rarely visits, such as Brighton, but she remembers being here before with 10,000 Maniacs, “The first visit was in 1984. We did a photo session for some music magazine on the pier. It was way off season, rainy, windy and so cold.” A Summer Evening With.... will take in 12 cities beginning in St. Ives, and ending in Oxford at the end of July. She’ll be
visiting Brighton and performing in St. George’s Church on 27th July. “This tour is unusual for me, I’ve just come with a single guitar player, Erik Della Penna. We’ve performed and recorded together for 20 years and he knows my catalogue well. We have been enjoying playing some of the more obscure songs. I’m expecting to play a bit of piano on stage (a very uncommon occurrence). We are going to be very nimble as a duo, all songs will be stripped away from their arrangements. I’m thinking of this almost like a poetry reading with scarce accompaniment. I hope it works!”
“When the major labels were disintegrating as a result of the free music revolution, Elektra let me walk out on my contract. I felt like I was running from a burning building.” After a fruitful solo career that included Top 30 US albums Tigerlily, Ophelia and Motherland, Merchant delved deep in to her folk roots, inspired partly by her accordion-playing Sicilian grandfather, and partly by her on-going interest in history, an interest framed around human exploitation, environmental degradation and political ideology. In 2003 she released a collection of traditionals but subsequently withdrew from the music industry while it was dealing with the turmoil of the internet revolution. “I released The House Carpenter’s Daughter when the major labels were disintegrating as a result of the free music revolution. Elektra let me walk out on my contract even though I owed them one more album. I felt like I was running from a burning building. The album came out coincidentally the week my daughter was born. I did one
interview with the New York Times and no tour. It sold 150,000 copies in the first six months. It was an interesting experiment, but when I was ready to put out Leave Your Sleep seven years later, I took the masters to Nonesuch. It’s been a very safe harbour for me and my work. I really enjoy working with Nonesuch. It’s a label run by a very respectful group of intelligent people who love music. They did a beautiful job on the last three albums and my box set (released in 2017)”. Stereogum once described her music as, “Unsentimental songs about confronting the horrors of the American past as well as its often brutal present”. What’s peaking her interest at the moment? “I’ve been working the past year with impoverished pre-school children in a small city in the Hudson Valley. I’ve been bringing music and dance and theatre into their classrooms and we produced a beautiful little musical together for their parents in June. So many of these children had never seen or heard live music before and it was magical to watch their response to hearing a violin or a clarinet or upright bass for the first time. I have this conviction that beauty should not be a privilege for the few. I’ve committed to four years of working with this school as their artist in residence, and I can’t wait to see the kids again in September.” To read the full interview visit Brightonsfinest.com/NatalieMerchant
The Natalie Merchant Collection, a deluxe 10CD box set, is available now
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